Digital Cipher No. 4

I. Music & Tech

Pandora CEO Westergren, replaced by CFO Naveen Chopra.

Along with President, Mike Herring and CMO, Nick Bartle, Pandora’s longtime CEO, and Co-Founder Tim Westergren stepped down this past week. In wake of his departure Naveen Chopra, the company’s CFO, has been appointed as the interim CEO. As Pandora continues juggling licensing costs and trying to find their footing in the digital music space, former Chief Digital Officer of MTV, Jason Hirschhorn, has been elected to Pandora’s board as Westergren’s replacement. Read more here.

Pandora Pulls Service in Australia and New Zealand

After significant changes to their corporate team, Pandora continues to change the tide with more strategic realignment. This past week, Pandora carefully analyzed data and decided to cut service in Australia and New Zealand. While this ultimately an exit from the international market, it is clear Pandora wants to narrow their focus on maximize their efforts in the domestic market. Read more here.

Pandora Stock Price : Expect Huge Moves

After a capital injection of $480 million and amidst much corporate unrest, Pandora stock has been making huge moves. In just 8 days of trading from June 19th to June 29th Pandora stock has seen a low of 6.76 and a high of 9.31, and analysts don’t expect this to continue. For more information check it out here.

YouTube launches its social video watching app

YouTube looks to diversify their huge library of video content with Uptime (iOS). Rather than viewing a video alone and then sharing a link, Uptime looks to create a shared viewing experience. Previously invite-only, Uptime gives users the ability to create links to invite others to shared viewing sessions with chat and timeline-based reactions. Read more here.

II. Entrepreneurship

He was recently ranked number one amongst Forbes’ Wealthiest Hip Hop Artists (at a “humble” $820 million), so it no surprise that the “can’t stop wan’t stop” mentality has always been second nature to Sean Combs. While, he seemed to climb the ladder to success escalator style, like most entrepreneurs Diddy had to combat adversity and constantly innovate in order to forge ahead of his counterparts (Jay Z, Dre, etc..). In 2013 he founded Revolt TV, and since then has put significant effort and emphasis toward visual content. His most recent push is the “Can’t Stop Won’t Stop” : The Bad Boy Story documentary. Check out the jewels he drops on his visit to his Funk Flex here.